Quotes from work
The Task
The Task: A Poem, in Six Books is a poem in blank verse by William Cowper published in 1785, usually seen as his supreme achievement. Its six books are called "The Sofa", "The Timepiece", "The Garden", "The Winter Evening", "The Winter Morning Walk" and "The Winter Walk at Noon". Beginning with a mock-Miltonic passage on the origins of the sofa, it develops into a discursive meditation on the blessings of nature, the retired life and religious faith, with attacks on slavery, blood sports, fashionable frivolity, lukewarm clergy and French despotism among other things. Cowper's subjects are those that occur to him naturally in the course of his reflections rather than being suggested by poetic convention, and the diction throughout is, for an 18th-century poem, unusually conversational and unartificial. As the poet himself writes,
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 363.
“Presume to lay their hand upon the ark
Of her magnificent and awful cause.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 231.
“United yet divided, twain at once:
So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book I, The Sofa, Line 77.
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 624.
Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 86.
Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 779.
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 411.
“Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 85.
“I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 108.
“She that asks
Her dear five hundred friends.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 642.
“Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 240.
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 17.
“Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 566.
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 702.
Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 34.
“Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 265.
“Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 606.
“Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 444.
Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 788.
